Hi all... back again after my original user account here disappeared sometime during Wuhan Flu.

Probably not the best time for me to start this discussion when my schedule is loaded for the coming weeks, but here we go.

Given all the discussion that goes on here and at other forums regarding handloading for LE rifles, my mind is turning to making jacketed .308" bullets fit to increase the number of choices of bullets available to those who want to do the extra work.  Not quite as easy as with cast bullets however.

I HAVE reloaded .308" caliber bullets for the Old Boys in the salad days of my youth, the ones who hunted with my Dad and friends' fathers who were still using their LE's, as they cried in anguish as the heavy .303 loads from Dominion disappeared from the local sporting goods store.  I loaded heavy .308" Nosler Partitions for them, sighted them in, and never got a complaint back.  I doubt any of them ever shot beyond 150 yards at a moose or an elk (or deer); given the condition of a few of those rifles, not surprised there were no complaints.

Back to the subject at hand, I am going to experiment with using various .308" bullets out of pure curiosity.  I enjoy the experimentation almost as much as shooting these days.  I see two ways to attempt this.

1.  Powder coat the bullets as I do for my cast bullet loads.  With cast bullets, one powder coat of what I'm using adds .002" to .004" to the bullet diameter - depending on technique used.  Recovered cast bullets from the butts show the powder coating is still in place.  So there's one method where you could 'bump' the diameter up to at least .310", .312",  or bigger.

Or for that matter, bump up .311" bullets in size if trying to get better results out of a rifle with a really oversize bore.

But... there is a major concern to be dealt with first (any metallurgists hanging around here?).  That powder coating involves baking the powder coating at around 425 F. for about half an hour.  I don't know if that kind of heat would have any annealing/hardening/softening affect on the copper jacket.  

A lesser concern is how it might affect the Brinell hardness of the lead core of the bullet if the intent is for hunting, depending on the alloy composition of that lead core.  I was hardening cast bullets to get the best grouping ability out of my LE and my grandfather's 1895 Winchester in 30 U.S. back in the early 1990's.

In our current days of slip and fall tort lawyers and corporations fearing that crowd, I doubt any bullet manufacturer will answer any questions I might have regarding metallurgy, their copper and lead and heat when I tell them what I'm thinking about.

2.  Second option: Dipping the bullets in a MDS solution that I bumped into while doing safety work in pulp mills long ago.  

I originally did that with the original Barnes X-bullets for my 30 Newton and 358 Norma Magnum.  The grouping was superb (for about five rounds) and they were awesome on game.  But the copper fouling was instantaneous and horrible, and hours spent lead lapping my bores didn't help a bit.  I dipped the bullets in a solution of this MDS product diluted with MEK.  Let the bullets dry sitting on their bases on parchment paper, and that was the end of the copper fouling issue.

This product when it dried did increase the diameter of those bullets, but I don't have one at hand right now to measure for comparison.  I only did one coat because the result was harder than woodpecker lips, and the few Barnes bullets I recovered from game before better versions were introduced had all the coating still intact after whacking a moose or an elk.

Sooo... any thoughts on this before my curiosity experimenting starts beginning?  I am NOT going to do anything with baking powder coating on bullets until I can get information with somebody knowledgeable about the metallurgy that would be involved in that process.

To pass the time while awaiting any suggestions, experience, questions, suggestions, etc: some family Lee Enfield history and mystery.  Complete with the family's version of Arlo Guthry's incriminating glossy pictures:

1943

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1944

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That's my father in those pictures, the second one just before he enlisted.  And that sure looks like a No. 4 rifle he's out hunting with.

So what was my father, a civvy at the time, doing while he was out hunting at the height of the war with what looks almost certainly to be a No. 4 rifle?  Presumably a Long Branch, as these pictures were taken in the East Kootenays, the SE corner of British Columbia, about half an hour from the Montana or Idaho border depending on whether you turned right or left when you headed for the border.

You would expect those No. 4 rifles would have been headed straight to Europe or recruit training depots during that time of the war, not being sold as surplus to civilians to hunt with.

Of course, it never occurred to me to ask my Dad about this while he was alive; it was only after he was dead that I thought about it and wished I could ask.

Back in the early 1960’s, a fair number of No. 4 rifles still with .303 barrels were rechambered for 7.62 NATO for the purpose of Service Rifle match shooting. The barrel breeching shoulder and breech face was machined back to shorten the chamber and then reamed out with a .308 Winchester reamer. 

Bores on the small side (0.301-.302) were reported to shoot better than bores of .303 and larger. 

Shooting .308 bullets down a .303 bore is not a new idea, but not one I have tried yet myself. 

Heating a bullet to 425 deg F will not anneal a gilding metal jacket. 

I spend most of my time now in Whitefish MT after immigrating after leaving the military (TWICE).  My house in Marysville and house in Whitefish are pretty much equidistant to the area you are speaking about.  About an hour from either side.

The old Trail Creek border crossing is right there in the At-Kish which you're speaking of, now closed.  We used to pop across the border while hunting elk or sheep there and sleeping in the beds of our trucks, rifles and all, to grab a burger 'n beer at a tiny little bar on the American side.  The border point was there to facilitate the logging trucks going back and forth when Crestbrook was logging the Sage Creek area and parts of what are now the At-Kish provincial park (all now non-motorized, of course).  

Border guys on both sides of the border were pretty frosty and always fun to stop and chat with.  Border Patrol in the US side took security there pretty seriously up until recently at the very least, and they regularly patrolled the border cut-line by quad or horse.

I'm still a BC resident for the purposes of hunting - and paying taxes, fishing, etc., and I still hunt that area but not as much any longer.  With the spiderweb of FSR's and auxillary roads there, the Quad Hunters and 4x4 hunters make it as busy as driving the roads outside Sparwood, Hooterville, or Fernie... so mostly I go elsewhere these days.  And I think my sheep hunting legs have called it quits for this lifetime.

Grizzly hunting is a thing of the past in BC, unless you're one of the Heritage Folks, there are more grumbly bears now in the East Kootenays than I ever remember (meaning, all the way back to the early 1960's), there are more conflicts, etc.  The griz were made into an issue by the Enviro-Nazis and Dippers back around Y2K, so to protect them from their imminent extinction, the only ones now shooting them regularly are the Conservation Officers and sometimes the Heritage Folks if there's a buck in it.

Sheep hunting was never great through the East Kootenays, including up the Elk Valley and the Ak-Kish since the die-offs of the 1960's that resulted from the bighorns coming into contact with domestic sheep.  I volunteered to do the GPS mapping of a dozen sheep that were transferred from the Stoddart Creek herd (the ones that hang around in town at Radium Hot Springs) to above Premier Ridge by Peter Davidson about 15 years ago in hopes of reestablishing that herd.  They were all gone within just a couple of years.  I doubt there's many bighorns between the Stoddard Creek herd at Radium and the Philips Creek herd that hangs out around the Roosville border crossing.

Where you used to be able to buy a tag and take your chances on spotting a full curl ram, even that's gone now: it's all 100% draw to hope for the fantasy of finding a full curl ram.

Moose that were so prolific... yeah, they've gone from being a tag purchase to also being small numbers of tags available by limited entry draw.

Elk numbers... the last elk count I helped my father and our Wildlife club do in conjunction with the government was about 1972.  If I remember the number correctly, the elk count for Region 4, the East Kootenays, was about 48,000 and you could shoot any bull as long as it had at least one antler.  Last year the count was 14,000 in total, and to be legal a bull must have six points.

In the early 1970's, we had enough mountain caribou that you could choose to fill your elk tag by shooting a mountain caribou bull.  I think the mountain caribou have been extirpated; last I heard there were maybe half a dozen still hanging on around the highway summit of the Creston-Salmo Pass.

I expect to see bull elk go on limited entry draw in the next few years.  Our mule deer numbers have decreased to the point that a buck to be legal has to be a four point.  Whitetails haven't done much better.  We used to have so many Sharptail grouse that they often ruined elk hunts down in the flatlands of the Rocky Mountain Trench where we did a lot of our lowland hunting - you'd flush a bunch every couple of hundred yards, and the elk would hear that and disappear.  I haven't seen a sharpie on the Canadian side of the border since the mid 1980's.

The only populations that are skyrocketing are the cows you see on crown land grazing permits - many wearing brands that trace back to Alberta.  Oh... and the miles and miles of elk fencing; all paid for by taxpayers, not the landowners whose cows spend spring to fall eating the forage on what is supposedly winter habitat for elk, deer, moose, etc.

This area used to be called 'The Serengeti Of North America' in my youth.  These days, all that's left is the scenery of the area you're hunting in and very mediocre hunting. 

The entire thing is a monument to a triad of enviro-Nazis, special interest groups, and government F&W bureaucrats and politicians showing that they can destroy one of the richest and most diverse wildlife habitats on the planet - and then blame it on loggers, who have been logging the area for over a century before they had their way with it.

If I seem upset, it's because I am.  It's odd in one way, but I'm glad my grandfather and father saw it and enjoyed it at it's very best, and my father only lived long enough to see the start of the steep decline. 

What an incredibly venal waste and tragedy for everybody, whether or not they ever hunted.

Yes, those DCRA (and private conversions) were fairly common when I added Service Rifle competition to my list of Gun Games I participated in during the mid 1970's.

I cry a tiny tear remembering walking past those DCRA conversions at gun shows even 30 years ago and turning my nose up at them because at the time the government of the day hadn't suddenly discovered that The Evil Baby Killer AR-15 was about to end life as we know it and designated them as restricted weapons, requiring the permits, storage, designated ranges, etc.  Restricting the AR-15 did give a small surge of new interest in Lee Enfield rifles for various types of full bore shooting.

I also remember walking by sniper T's, in their boxes, all the kit and serial numbers matching on tables for sale at the Calgary Gun Show for $400 - and laughing and wondering why anybody would fork over that money for what looked like a lousy scope on an old rifle and a completely useless wooden box to go with it.  That wasn't back in my 20's or 30's, BTW: about 30 years ago.

I'm not a collector but... my, how times have changed.

 

I think I mentioned I loaded Nosler Partitions into some of The Old Boys favorite Lee Enfields when the heavy Dominion loads they worshipped disappeared.  I assumed they might rattle down the bores like a BB in a match box, but all those old guys crowed that their old Lee Enfield once again killed like a thunderbolt from God, and they sighted in well enough for the rifles they were reloaded for, so I guess it worked well enough.

Epps of course was pretty much the last word in different calibers, but he was also a wildcatter.

A gunsmith friend of mine and I created a 'Mexican Mauser' out of a couple of severely Bubba'd Lee Enfields to use as knock around camp guns for hunting camp when in places where grumbly bears were common.  I still have the records kicking around somewhere, but we essentially blew out the neck to .40 caliber and a cheap rebarrel, making a sort of 40-60 Maynard on steroids.  A 210gr. WFB hard cast bullet at 2100 fps, with Quickload saying pressures maxed at 48k psi.

Those were just plain fun - we could shoot lighter bulk cast pistol bullets out of them with a bit of Red Dot to heavy up for bull gophers in his fields, or load the more serious bullets to have in camp.  Wish I still I had kept it, but a friend who was transferred to the Yukon talked me out of it.

A square 10 wrote: i expected to see paper rapped bullets for some reason ,

No, not going to do that.  Been there/done that when my obsession of the moment was poking away at targets far, far away with black powder rifles. Made it into a chore, cutting and wrapping paper patches - and that was on big fat lead bullets.

Then Quigly Down Under was released - and the seriousness and the gamesmanship that erupted took so much of fun out of it.  Just like Legends Of The Fall made flyfishing like golf and half of it was a spendy fashion show.

I have no doubt that more than one guy has paper patched jacketed .308" bullets for use in a Lee Enfields.  But I want something fast and easy that can be done with just a few seconds per bullet.

Powder coating them or dipping them in that Sandstrom product would meet that criteria for being easy and taking very, very little time.

Whether it would work or not and result .308" modified bullets every bit as accurate or better than what is available in the .311" size, of course, would be left to be seen.

Rick wrote: To pass the time while awaiting any suggestions, experience, questions, suggestions, etc: some family Lee Enfield history and mystery.

Nobody is remotely curious of how a civilian is wandering around hunting at the height of WWII in 1943/1944 with a minty new Long Branch No. 4 slung over his shoulder?  Rather than that rifle being overseas in the hands of an infantry Death Tech?

I certainly am!  Would still be curious even if it wasn't my father.